We're Home
by Fireglass
Summary: Tag to my WIP, Faceless  Sam spends his first Christmas with the Winchesters. Eggnog, shenanigans, and bonding ensue. How much can you fix with a broken light bulb and a hand-crank generator? Pure fluff. Set during Chapter 10.


Sam learned the hard way that he was allergic to dust.

This, with his head and shoulders stuffed through the narrow gap of the attic, peering through the low-paneled room full of blocky items. The first breath he took stirred up so much dust, Sam coughed; then sneezed, one, two, three times.

"See anything up there?" Dean's hand was on the back of Sam's ankle, steadying him on the wobbly, claw-footed ladder.

"Yeah, I think I just sneezed part of my brain out." Sam's congested voice thumped back to him off the crusted, insulated walls. "Remind me again why we're doing this?"

"Because it's _Christmas_, Sam, you can't have Christmas without the tree." Dean said impatiently.

"You said that. I mean, why am _I _the one crawling into the attic?"

"'Cause you're a skinny little twerp. Move it." Dean gave Sam a shove with his shoulder, and Sam squeezed his elbows through the tiny opening with a grunt of effort, stopping to catch his breath with his arms braced on the floor.

The crash outside of Tulsa had happened three days ago, but it felt, to Sam, like much longer; the scab on his hairline was mostly just a bad thought unless he pressed it wrong; and Dean, though hitching slightly sometimes when he walked, didn't wear his hurts on his sleeve. John of course was a mask of composure through and through, a solid wall of steel wearing human skin. Sam couldn't tell at any particular moment how much pain he was in from his fractured arm; but he'd jumped at the chance to go to the store with Mary for supplies, so Sam reasoned he couldn't be feeling completely paralyzed with agony.

"Sam!" Dean snapped from below. "What's the hold up? You find your fairy godmother up there, or something?"

Sam rolled his eyes and hauled himself by his arms up through the gap, crawling through miles of dust to find the rectangular box that housed the fake tree. He scooted it toward the attic door, then elbowed between mountains of stuffed trash bags, searching for the ornaments.

Stopping, frozen, and shaking his head to scatter his bangs from his eyes, Sam listened to the scuttling of mice through the walls, triggering a memory: dark halls, wet floors, sharing a cramped cell with whiskered visitors until a demon came around and crushed them out, one by one.

Lilith didn't like mice in her city.

Sam snapped out of the memory when his foot bumped one of the trash bags, sending a single frosted-blue globe rolling across the floor. Sam dove to catch it before it plummeted over the edge of the trap door and found himself hanging over Dean's head, their eyes meeting.

"Dude—?" Dean's eyes were wide.

"Catch." Sam dropped the ball and Dean caught it by reflex; Sam was grinning now as he scrambled back and tipped the tree down the hatch.

"What about the portable generator, is it up there?" Dean called.

"Still looking." Sam waded into the depths of the attic, shifting aside a musty satellite chair that had to have been Dean's when he was little; a thigh holster for a buoy knife; and finally, wedged in the back, a crank-handled generator.

Sam shouldered it back toward the hatch, leaning it down gingerly until he felt Dean catch the base. "Why don't we use this thing for something else, Dean?"

"Like what? Powering the refrigerator for two hours?" Dean retorted. "This thing's almost shot, Sam. I'm not even sure it's gonna work for the tree, so just slow down there, all right?"

Sam snorted out dust and went back for the trash bag, pulling the red plastic strings apart and sneezing against another puff of dust. Inside, half a hundred orbs in varying colors made his vision dance. He lugged the first bag over his shoulder, grabbed the one underneath it that rattled the same way, and squeezed himself back down the stairs with a two-fingered grip on the unstable ladder.

"Well, look at you, Sammy-Clause." Dean grinned, his eyes feathering at the corners. "Which bag is mine, huh? The nice toys or the _naughty_ toys?"

Sam stopped, blinking with confusion, at the bottom of the steps. "What are you talking about, Dean?"

A penetrating force, something between sadness and exasperation, had Dean looking away. "Right, I forgot, you don't know about Santa Clause." Dean tucked the tree box under one arm. "C'mon, mom and dad are gonna be back before ya know it."

"Wait, Dean, what's a Santa Clause?" Sam dodged on Dean's heels, down the stairs and into the living room; they'd already strategized the placement of the tree, in front of the fireplace and across from the couch. Dean dropped the box unceremoniously onto the floor and started ripping up the flaps.

"Just some old guy in a suit who brings kids presents, I dunno." Dean's tone was almost querulous, and reluctant.

Sam knelt, settling the bags gently, his eyes riveted on Dean's face. "So, how's he do it?"

"Huh?" Dean plucked out the first batch of branches, strung together with a length of fraying twine.

"Santa Clause. How does he get to every single kid in the world before Christmas? Is he some kind of monster, or—what?"

Dean blinked at him. "You gotta be kiddin' me, Sam."

Sam felt that uncomfortable swoop of his gut, familiar of every time he'd been faced with the knowledge that his sheltered life had left him disadvantaged. "Uh…he's not—real, is he?" With all the things Sam had seen in his lifetime, monsters of every believable size and species, it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that a decorated man brought gifts to people.

"_No_, Sam, what're you, _five_?" Dean squinted at him with disbelief. "Of course Santa's not real, he's just some story parents tell their kids to explain where all their loot comes from on Christmas."

"Right." Sam felt foolish, unwinding the plastic ties with long, restless fingers. "So, we're…uh, throwing together this tree because…?"

"Because that's what people do on Christmas, Sam, they put up a tree and put stuff under it and sing a buncha goofy songs about angels and crap!"

"Okay. Geeze. Touchy."

Dean looked uncomfortable. "Besides, it's your first Christmas, so…we're gonna do this right. Just go with it."

"All right, sure." Sam glanced at the enormous, blocky battery-powered boombox on the armchair. "Did you find that tape you were looking for?"

Dean seemed to welcome the change of subject. "Nope. CD." He shoved himself to his feet, grabbing a jewel case off the coffee table. He popped it into the top of the boombox and cranked the volume up, squeezing his eyes shut and wagging his head passionately to the opening piano chords of the first song.

"What is this?" Sam asked.

"Dude, _Trans-Siberian Orchestra_." Dean smirked, his eyes flipping open. "All right, let's do this, Sam."

Dean, Sam found, was a master at building a Christmas tree from the ground up; stacking, fitting the metal pole into the plastic faux-wood sleeve, setting the branches into their slots on the slatted cuffs, spaced along the hollow green-painted trunk. The tree was easily seven-and-half feet tall, and it was hard work, squeezing around the well-lit fireplace and the wall, first to fit the branches and then to string the lights. Within half an hour they were both sweating under the heat of the fire, and Dean shucked off his t-shirt, glancing out the window.

"No snow," His voice was heavy with disappointment. "Man, this is like the fifth Christmas we've had without snow."

"Dean, it snowed last month."

"_So_? Christmas is different."

"_Dean_." Sam held up the lights emphatically, half of the strand hugging the tree and with the rest coiled on the floor. "These lights aren't gonna hang themselves."

"Heathen." Dean muttered, but he snatched the lights from the floor, anyway, wedging himself back behind the tree.

"I gotta ask," Sam said, waiting for Dean to pass him the end of the strand. "What's the deal with presents?"

"Just…tradition, I guess." Dean's voice was jilted as he crammed his arm around the bulk of the fat, furred tree, handing over the lights. "Don't get your hopes up, Sam, we can't really squeeze out the bucks for presents." He dragged himself out from behind the tree, a myriad of tiny red welts on his chest from the digging intrusion of the needles. "All right, plug her in, let's light this baby up."

"You got it." Sam knelt beside the generator, jammed the plug in, cranked the handle, and—nothing.

"Oh, crap, you gotta be kidding me." Dean groaned. He dropped to his knees and shimmied under the tree like he would his truck, if there was some dysfunction that made the vehicle clatter and cough. "Ah, gotcha, it's a bad bulb. Hey, Sam, unplug the tree and see if there's a spare set of lights in one of those bags."

"Sure." Sam plunged his hand to the elbow in one of the sacks of Christmas paraphernalia and sucked in a harsh hiss of, "_Agh_," as a something slim and sharp stabbed his finger. He yanked his hand back, sucking the blood from the cut.

"You fall in over there?"

"Bite me." Sam muttered, laying the bag open this time and uncovering an extra strand of lights. He gently unscrewed one peaked bulb and dropped on his back on the opposite side of the tree's plastic-wrapped trunk, handing the bulb to Dean. "Here ya go."

"Thanks." Dean had the broken bulb already out of the socket, and twisted the new one in. Sam folded his hands on his stomach and stared at the underside of the pine boughs, a tunnel of bristly stripes leading straight up to the crown of the tree, where everything thickened and assimilated together.

Dean finished with the bulb and dropped his arms to his torso, mirroring Sam's position; he held his elbow just clear of his injured side.

They stayed like that, for a minute, not saying anything; then Dean rocked his head sideways, and Sam did the same.

"It's your first Christmas." Dean stated the obvious with almost childlike eyes. "I mean, it's your first real, _for real_ Christmas."

"Yeah, I noticed." Sam's voice felt trapped in the nearness of the boughs that were almost brushing his face.

The next song on the CD picked up, a slower plucking guitar tune, and they rolled out from under the tree. Dean brushed his hands on his thighs, all business again. "Take two, Sam. Hit it!"

Sam pushed the plug into the generator and gave it a few cranks, torquing his shoulder as the flush of multicolored lights from the Christmas tree bathed the wall beside him. He twisted a look over his shoulder, staying crouched, watching Dean's eyes travel up the massive berth of the tree, to its top, and back again. There was wonder in his face that Sam had never seen before.

Sam straightened, one hand to the wall, and felt a strange wetness in his own eyes, his throat constricting as he followed Dean's gaze. Seeing the brilliance of the lights, not only with his own awe but with Dean's settling just under his skin as well, felt like it wouldn't all fit in the cavity of his chest; he could barely breathe around it.

"Who needs presents?" Sam's voice came out wrong, faintly strangled.

"C'mon, starry-eyes, let's make her _really_ shine, huh?" Dean smacked Sam's chest with the back of his hand and grabbed a handful of the iridescent globes from the trash bag.

"Watch it, there's a broken one in there." Sam rubbed the split on his finger.

"Dually noted." Dean started hanging the ornaments on the tree. "Rule Number One of decorating a Christmas tree, Sam, you listening?"

"Rule Number One." Sam fished around carefully and grabbed a box of glass angels on thin flossy strings. "Listening."

"Never put a red ball by a red light, or a green one by a green light, and so on. And please, for the love of _God_, don't put two balls the same color beside each other."

"I didn't realize there was some aesthetic _code_, here." Sam teased, and just to annoy Dean he hung two green balls an inch apart by a green light.

Dean's eyes zeroed in on the offense like a moth to a flame. "I will end you, Sam."

Sam laughed out loud, shifting the ornaments around, and Sam and Dean fell to decorating in companionable silence; except for the occasions when Dean would find a loose paperclip and flick it into Sam's hair, leaving Sam to dig it out while Dean hung an assortment of globes and figurines from the boughs.

Fifteen minutes later, Dean stepped back, arms folded. "It's comin' together, Sam." He nodded his approval at the scattering of garlands and collectibles, and Sam saw that same softness return to Dean's eyes. "Man, I haven't seen this thing since I was a kid. This is a great tree."

"You used to put it up before you moved to New York?"

"Yeah, dad bought it when mom was pregnant with me." Dean shook his head. "I used to think this thing was a lot bigger than…" He trailed off, scratching the back of his head, and Sam felt a brush of sympathy scrunching his face; being uprooted from the only life he'd ever known hadn't been traumatic for him. If anything, it had been a saving grace; he still struggled to understand how much Dean had been affected by the shift from quiet Kansas to the bustle of a big city.

"Dean, hey—"

Dean flung out an arm, stopping him. A wide smile split his face. "Oh, dude, I _love _this song."

The fast-beat guitar lick at the beginning of the song had Sam cocking his head. "I think I know this one."

"What, _Wizards in Winter_?" Dean was nodding subtly, quickly, to the beat. "Yeah, _Trans-Siberian _toughed it out playing backstreet shows for a couple years after the industry went south. Dad took me to see 'em once, when they were passin' through near Bobby's place."

Sam smiled. "It's the guitar riffs, huh?"

Dean's reciprocating grin was half-crazed. "_Hell yeah_." He forged an air-guitar with his hands and waled along to the one in the song as it kicked up its pace, segueing into a slow but deliberate solo. "C'mon, Sam, help me out!"

Sam shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. "_How_?"

"Piano, c'mon!" Dean grabbed Sam's wrist and jammed a thumb into the branching bones on the back of his hand, forcing his fingers apart. "Feel that beat. Right? Just follow the chords."

"Dude, I don't know _how _to play the piano!"

"That's why it's _air-piano_, Sam!" Dean shoved Sam's shoulder hard with his, leaning, getting into Sam's space. "Just do it, c'mon, don't be a Grinch!"

Sam rolled his eyes and reluctantly joined in air-piano alongside Dean's air-guitar. Dean's megawatt grin was brighter than the lights on the tree as he squeezed his eyes shut and leaned into the motion of the invisible instrument, and Sam had to laugh; Dean's enthusiasm was usually subdued under an air of the casual, almost lazy, but when something triggered his passion it was infectious, and Sam couldn't stay irritated with him.

"All right, here it comes, here's your solo!" Dean announced, giving one last sweeping strum of the guitar and pointing to Sam. Sam leaned his whole body into the motion of playing the piano, pulling back when Dean strummed again, then taking back over; trading off until Dean announced, "All right, now you take bass!"

Sam stopped, confused. "What?"

"C'mon, back-to-back, do what I do!" Dean demonstrated a shorter, choppier motion of playing, then swung around and put his back to Sam's. "Just put your heart into it, Sammy."

It wasn't hard to imitate Dean; wasn't even hard, really, to find the place of fervor for the music that fed Dean's exuberant display. And suddenly they were back to back, air-guitar and air-bass, and Sam realized this was actually a stupid kind of fun that had nothing whatsoever to do with the Pits, with training, with anything dangerous.

It was just, _fun_, Guitar and Bass alone in the house with the tree and a _Trans-Siberian Orchestra _CD; and when the song came to a climax Dean launched himself onto the couch, standing in full view of the window in nothing but his boxers, whipping his head so hard to the music that Sam could almost hear his muscles knotting.

"Piano!" Dean hollered, and Sam took his old post back, sinking the feeling and the fun and all of the chaos of the crash and the days that followed into this, slamming his eyes shut and playing on nothing until his flying fingers were sore, and then Dean dropped to one knee on the couch for the last strum of his guitar, his arm lingering straight in the air like a flag of triumph.

A throat cleared by the door. "That's quite a show you've got goin'."

Dean dropped his arm and snapped a wide-eyed stare onto John; Mary was wedged into the doorway with him, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth, and Sam had a feeling she was holding back a peal of laughter.

The back of Dean's neck flushed pink. "Hey, guys."

"Hi," Sam chimed in.

"We were just, uh…" Dean shot a helpless, mortified glance at Sam. "We were finishing up the tree."

"Can see that." John's voice was a slow drawl, more tired than anything, and he carried a bag in his good arm with the other still in a sling. "Dean, go put on pants."

"_Excellent_ plan, y'know what, I'm gonna get right on that." Dean hurried upstairs and Sam, pinking a bit himself around the cheeks, gnawed his bottom lip and smiled sheepishly.

"Trans-Siberian Orchestra."

"I know the feeling." Mary said, her voice and face finally in control.

"Did you—bring food?" Sam avoided John's eyes; he'd felt an indefinable tension between them since the crash, something that was beyond his control. Almost a brewing maelstrom that he was desperate to avoid.

"We brought the essentials, and a little something extra." Mary set the plastic grocery bag on the coffee table and pulled out a half-gallon of something that was a rich yellowish color. "Eggnog. Your first, right?"

Sam cocked his head. "What's in it?"

"Eggs, nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon." John settled on the couch, passing a hand down his face, and pulled a brown bottle of liquor from the front of his jacket. "And rum."

Sam swallowed. "Sounds good."

"It's _very _good." Mary disappeared into the kitchen, returning with four coffee mugs that she spread out on the table; she filled each with a liberal amount of eggnog, then unpacked a bag of chestnuts, a packet of hotdogs, buns, and baked beans. "Care to cook these over the fire, John?"

By the time John had the first two hotdogs speared on an iron poker and held into the crackling fireplace, Dean was back, wearing sweatpants and carrying his guitar in one hand. He swung around the corner and moved the boombox off the chair, plunking down into it. "All right, who's ready for some holiday favorites?"

Mary leaned against the arm of the couch, her eggnog in her hands. "I know I sure am, sweetheart."

Dean played songs that Sam felt like he knew, distantly, or should've known; Mary sang along to a few of them, and named the titles of every one. _Silent Night_, and _Angels We Have Heard on High; The First Noel; O Holy Night_. Dean played _Angels We Have Heard on High _more than once, and so Sam could only assume there was something more to that song than he could understand.

That suspicion confirmed when he crouched by the fireplace, warming his hands by the flames, and caught sight of a stripe of wetness on John's cheek, hastily scrubbed away when he caught Sam looking.

Before long, a somber quiet settled over them; and then Mary stood up, an uncoordinated tangle of arms and legs, and Sam realized that she was actually inebriated; he himself had been sipping the eggnog without any rum added, and wasn't impressed, but Mary had had almost a whole coffee mug and now she was just _smiling_.

"Play me something I can dance to, Dean." She said, and there was a vivacious laughter in her voice that had Sam cocking his head back, surprised and unable to battle down his own smile.

Dean flicked a look up at her. "I don't think I know anything that's gonna fit your mood right now, mom."

Mary smiled and tipped down, pressing a button on the boombox that revved it to life; Sam jumped, listening closely to the slow beats of the piano keys with a sense that maybe Mary had chosen the wrong song.

Until he heard the guitar starting in, and he sat with his back pressed to the rough stone siding of the fireplace, watching Mary move closer to Dean, with the piano chords fading out.

And then the song exploded into a fast beat, guitars and strings that rang inside Sam's head, and Mary grabbed Dean's hands, pulling him to his feet and forcing him into a dance with her. Dean was less coordinated than she was, stone-cold sober, but he was laughing, one hand secure around Mary's back to keep her from falling as they stumbled their way through the room.

The guitar solo slipped under Sam's skin and he found himself playing along air-guitar like Dean had showed him, until John's eyes found him and Sam, looking away, dropped his hands back into his lap.

When the song ended, Mary dropped onto the couch, laughing, and she was so close to John that Sam could see their arms brushing; could see how John closed his eyes briefly, with a gutting of sadness across his features. He was getting paler, with pain, maybe, or just tiredness; and Sam had the sudden rocky feeling of something slipping away.

"You okay?" He asked, cautiously.

"Just tired." John straightened, blinking his eyes open as the phone in his jacket pocket rang shrilly. "Dean, you mind gettin' that for me?"

Dean, still laughing and slightly breathless from his dance with Mary, nodded and tossed John the jacket. He caught it with his good hand, but even so Sam saw the unmistakable hurting arc across his face. John seemed to shake it away, digging out his phone, flipping it open and pressing it to his ear.

"This is John Winchester…"

"C'mon, mom, you should hit the hay." Dean said.

"Dean, it's not even eight." Mary's tone edged on complaining, and Sam hid his laughter in a cough.

"Fine, then eat a couple hotdogs first. But you're gonna crash soon, anyway." Dean plopped next to her on the couch. "You always get drunk on Christmas, every year since I was, what, _nine_?"

"Why stop a tradition?" Mary's smile was slightly sloppy but winning, and with the inhibitions stripped away Sam could clearly see that her eyes were Dean's, and there was something honest and friendly around her mouth that was Dean's, too. It made him feel more relaxed, a little looser in the situation; he skated his own mug closer and took a long drink, mulling over Dean's compassion and openness with Mary, John's reserve and Mary herself, drunk and happy.

Sam wondered where, if anywhere, he belonged in all of this.

"All right, thanks again." John slapped the phone shut. "That was Bobby Singer, he says he found the Impala down near the border. He's willing to take her to his place free of charge."

Dean closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "Thank God."

"Merry Christmas." John tossed the phone onto the table. "All right, let's eat."

The hot dogs were crispy on the outside, but Sam found he didn't mind the flavor, eating two in rapid succession and washing them down with eggnog. Mary tried to do the same, but Dean blocked her when she reached for the rum, and at her protesting face he said, simply, "Everybody's got a limit, mom."

To Sam's surprise, Mary straightened, seemed to come back into herself slightly. She finished eating, dropped a kiss on Dean's temple, then reached over and squeezed John's hand; he startled slightly from the touch, like she'd summoned him back from someplace far away, deeply sunken and thoughtful.

"Merry Christmas, John." She whispered, and then she got to her feet, still a hair unsteady, and grazed her hand over Sam's head; Sam leaned into the touch. "Merry Christmas, Sam."

She moved for the stairs, slow and unsteady, and Sam didn't think any of them breathed until the bedroom door closed upstairs.

John leaned his head back. "You boys mind clearing out?"

Something slammed shut in Dean's eyes. "Yeah. C'mon, Sam."

Sam expected to head upstairs, to bury himself in the books they'd been poring over since the accident; books about every culture they could think of, trying to find something about the demons that existed outside of religious fanfare. So he was surprised when Dean went left instead of right, grabbing his jacket off the doorjamb, tossing his hoodie to Sam.

"Hats." John said from the couch; he was stretched out, now, holding his injured arm gingerly to his ribs. "Colder than a well-digger's ass out there."

Dean rolled his eyes, snatched a musty hat out of the basket beside the arm of the couch, and tossed one to Sam. On impulse, Sam grabbed a scarf from the basket, too, winding it around his throat on the way out.

The night was cold, clear, with hundreds of stars like snowflakes of their own, trapped in the stratosphere. Sam and Dean wandered toward the truck, and stopped beside it, leaning against its bulbous nose.

"Think he's okay?" Sam asked.

"Who, dad? Yeah, he's fine, he's _dad_. He's just sore, that's all." Dean tugged the hat low over his forehead. "Dad's kind of a Scrooge, I guess."

Sam felt a stab of frustration at what he assumed was yet another obscure Christmas reference. "Dean, seriously, _what the hell_?"

"He's not big on holidays." Dean amended. "Never really has been, but this year, it's…I dunno, for all of us, I guess it's like we're livin' this ginormous _lie_."

"Lie? About _what_?"

"We haven't had a Christmas together since I was eleven, Sam. Dad bailed, and mom and I weren't exactly rollin' in riches. Comin' back together like this, we don't know what's gonna happen. We could lose all of this, spend next Christmas at different end of the freakin' planet."

And it struck Sam, that Dean was just as afraid as he was, and of the same thing: losing what he had. Sam, because he'd never known better; and Dean, because he'd known how bad things could be. Both of them desperate to cling to this broken thing that hung between them, this semblance of belonging to something.

Sam leaned his head back, his breath making curly fog in the air. "No snow."

"Yep. Crappy weather."

"It's not so bad." Sam listed his head sideways, the scarf tickling his throat. "We could have a mud-ball fight, instead of a snow-ball fight."

"I'll have to be totally snockered before I mud-wrestle you, big guy."

"So, let's get drunk and see what kinda trouble we can get into."

Dean smirked, pinning an amused stare on Sam. "What's gotten into you, Sammy-Clause? Tradin' your halo for devil horns?"

The question struck deeper, Sam thought, than Dean had probably meant it to. "Maybe, just this once, we both deserve for something good to happen. Maybe," He glanced toward the house. "We've earned the right to keep this."

Dean stared up at him, moonlight turning green eyes iridescent. "Look, mom getting drunk and dad being a pain in the ass doesn't mean we're gonna lose—"

"You know what I mean."

Azazel, he meant, all the demons, and the shift of the tides. The wrecked Impala; the wind was changing again, and Sam didn't know if it would blow in their favor from now on; or if this Christmas of no presents, no snow, was the last good thing their family would have for a long time.

"We'll figure it out, Sam." Dean said, and it was a promise.

Sam sank his hands into his pockets, rubbed his fingers over the itchy wool of the hat, right where the feathery ends of his hair managed to poke through. "Merry Christmas, Dean." _I want to stay. This—this is what I don't want to lose. Losing this would kill me._

Dean bumped shoulders with him, tipping his head back to look at the stars. "Merry Christmas, Sammy." _You're not goin' anywhere, pal._

_We're finally home. _

Inside the house, the generator died with a pop, plunging the windows into frost-laced darkness.


End file.
